BBC news: Somalia - Rights group says all sides guilty of crime

From BBC News this morning, an article based on the report on 'the state of Somalia' currently issued by Human Rights Watch:

Human Rights Watch has said all sides in Somalia's are guilty of serious violations of international law.

The campaign group says civilians are bearing the brunt not just of a terrible famine but also a failure by any side to protect them.

It says Islamist group al-Shabab is guilty of unrelenting brutality, while government troops carry out arbitrary arrests and detentions.

HRW also criticises the West for not exerting pressure to stop the abuses.

A spokesman for the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) denied the accusations, and said the body was committed to human rights.

The HRW report, You Don't Know Who to Blame (link), says all sides in the conflict should end abuses against civilians and ensure Somalis have access to aid.

The report's author, Ben Rawlence, told the BBC that al-Shabab carries out unrelenting daily repression and brutality in areas under its control, taxing the population for access to water, forcefully recruiting men so they cannot grow crops and restricting access to aid agencies.

"Al-Shabab must carry the burden of that responsibility for the way in which the demands of the fighting has led to human rights violations which have contributed to famine," he said.

Mr Rawlence said al-Shabab often fired from within populated areas towards TFG troops and UN peacekeepers, who responded "without paying too much attention to who is there".

The report also accuses the TFG of carrying out arbitrary arrests and detentions, and says those who flee the country face more problems, enduring rape and extortion, allegedly by the Kenyan police.

Mr Rawlence said support for the TFG had to come with pressure for it to respect human rights and improve accountability of its security forces and government.

But Abdi Rashid Aseed, a spokesman for TFG, said the information used for the report was inaccurate and denied the accusations in it.

"When you are restoring law and order certain things are going to happen; collateral damage happens not only in Somalia but in all parts of the world where there is trouble and wars," he told the BBC.

"This Transitional Government is committed to human rights. We are happy to listen but criticism has to be constructive."

Somalia has been without an effective government for 20 years - much of southern and central Somalia is controlled by al-Shabab, which has links to al-Qaeda and has imposed strict Sharia law.

Some 1.4 million people have been displaced within the country and hundreds of thousands have fled to neighbouring countries to escape fighting and food shortages. The World Health Organisation estimates that 2.8m people are in need of food aid.

Foreign Policy Magazine: Failed States Index 2011

In the 7th outing for the series, Foreign Policy today released its Failed States Index for 2011. Not a single article, but rather a collection of insightful reports—including "Postcards from Hell", images from 'the world's most failed states'. The introduction provides a rationale for a state's inclusion in the index and provides a convenient overview of findings:

Three African states -- Somalia, Chad, and Sudan -- once again top this year's Failed States Index, the annual ranking prepared by the Fund for Peace and published by FOREIGN POLICY of the world's most vulnerable countries. For four years in a row, Somalia has held the No. 1 spot, indicating the depth of the crisis in the international community's longest-running failure.

The new edition of the index draws on some 130,000 publicly available sources to analyze 177 countries and rate them on 12 indicators of pressure on the state during the year 2010 -- from refugee flows to poverty, public services to security threats. Taken together, a country's performance on this battery of indicators tells us how stable -- or unstable -- it is. And the latest results show how much the 2008 economic crisis and its ripple effects everywhere, from collapsing trade to soaring food prices to stagnant investment, are still haunting the world.

Somalia's unending woes are the stuff hopelessness is made of. But elsewhere in the top 20, some countries showed improvement, even as others fell further behind. Afghanistan and Iraq both moved down the ranks, suggesting slight gains for the two war-torn countries as the United States seeks a sustainable exit strategy. Kenya moved out of the top 15, showing that the country continues to recover from its bloody post-election ethnic warfare of recent years. Liberia and East Timor, wards of the United Nations, largely stayed out of trouble. But Haiti, already a portrait of misery, moved up six places on the index, battered and struggling to cope with the aftermath of January 2010's tragic earthquake, which left more than 300,000 dead. Another former French colony, Ivory Coast, rejoined the top 10, grimly foreshadowing its devastating post-election crisis this year, while fragile Niger leapt four spots amid a devastating famine.

Africa's promise and peril are likely to figure prominently again this year, with 27 African countries scheduled to hold presidential, legislative, or local elections throughout 2011. As much as elections can contribute to democratic progress, they are often a flashpoint for conflict -- conflicts that invariably send already fragile states back up the ranks of the index. Uganda's incumbent President Yoweri Museveni won reelection in February, but the opposition has cried foul and his inauguration was met with violent protests. In Nigeria, steady in the rankings this year at No. 14, post-election rampages in April killed as many as 800 people. Sudan's closely watched referendum in January on an independent southern state was surprisingly free of bloodshed, but the country continues to hover on the brink of new violence.

As if its traumas last year weren't horrific enough, Haiti in 2011 is again proving to be a hard test for the world, with billions of dollars in donation pledges left unfulfilled and thousands still living in squalid tent camps, battling a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 4,600. After a fraud-marred first round, a presidential runoff election in March brought to power an untested stage performer nicknamed "Sweet Micky."

Perhaps the biggest challenge of all for 2011 will be dealing with the global fallout of the Arab revolutions, which began in Tunisia and quickly spread to Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Few could have predicted that a street vendor's humiliation would be the spark that set an entire region ablaze, with consequences that may reach far beyond the Middle East. After all, if peaceful protesters can unseat an entrenched dictator in Cairo, why can't they take to the repressed streets of Tashkent or Rangoon?

Do take the time to explore this valuable study of the world's most troubled spots...

Economist: Failed states - Where life is cheap and talk is loose

Modish jargon or a useful category? The term “failed state” conceals many tangles...

The Economist today features an extremely useful article looking at the semantics (meaning)  of the "failed state", a phenomenon that defies easy description. It's difficult to isolate a convenient extract from this excellent piece, so do read the whole thing...

The article includes an informative table laying out several prime candidates for fulfillment of the definition of a "failed state":